Yellowstone National Park recently released its Final Bison Management Plan. It arbitrarily limits bison numbers through tribal hunting outside of the park and the transfer of public Yellowstone bison to Indian reservations. The NPS Preferred Alternative 2 is better than the existing bison management but will continue the degradation of wild bison. Alt. 3 is…
This past week, the Trust for Public Lands announced that it had secured a conservation easement for 13,000 acres in Northwest Montana as part of the Lost Trail Conservation Area. The easement precludes subdivision of the land for housing tracts and allows the landowner, Green Diamond, to continue its forestry operations. Advocates of this…
While those of us who care about our public lands and wildlife are often focused on on-the-ground conditions for this species or that, we can lose sight of the bigger picture. So many of the wildlands and wildlife problems we are concerned about are merely symptoms of agency capture, corruption. “The tendency of regulators to…
I started to be involved in conservation issues when I was 15 growing up in southern California. I watched natural areas that I loved being bulldozed into oblivion for sprawl development. I’ve continued my conservation involvement ever since. I am now retired and 72. Along the way, I had many conservation-related jobs, including as an…
How many people know that in the state of Washington, more wolves are killed by Native people than any other group? You probably haven’t heard about this, even from wolf advocacy groups. How many conservationists know that Native people are among the staunchest advocates for oil development on Alaska’s North Slope, including in the Arctic…
On April 24th, 2024, the Vermont Law and Graduate School and Wild Horse Fire Brigade sent a letter to the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) District office in Medford, Oregon, proposing a collaboration between the Wild Horse (feral) Fire Brigade and the BLM to reduce wildfire threat through feral horse grazing on the Cascade-Siskiyou National…
The Washington Post published an article a few years ago that repeated the old and flawed idea that ranching will “protect” the land and suggesting conservation easements are the solution to sprawl. If championing cows or hayfields is your conservation policy, one must rethink the strategy. Keep in mind that nearly all the development found…
Dear Subscribers, Recently, Ralph Maughan, the founder of The Wildlife News, has turned over operations to myself and The Wildlife News will be supported and managed as a project of Sage Steppe Wild. As you may have noticed, the site is undergoing renovations and is now accessible on mobile devices. The Wildlife News will continue…
George Wuerthner is an ecologist and writer who has published 38 books on various topics related to environmental and natural history. He has visited over 400 designated wilderness areas and over 200 national park units.